Apollo economist says AI has delivered no financial payoff outside tech

Apollo Global Management chief economist Torsten Slok says artificial intelligence has yet to produce a financial payoff for large companies outside the technology sector.

In a recent note, Slok examined what he calls the “S&P 493”: the S&P 500 excluding Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia and Tesla. He found that profit margins and revenue per worker appeared flat, with no evidence that AI was improving productivity.

Slok said it would be difficult for companies outside tech to turn cheaper AI into higher revenue growth and profit margins. He argued that business depends heavily on judgment, and wrote that AI does not understand accountability, trust, culture, unwritten rules, ethical trade-offs or fairness—factors he said shape reputational risk and ultimately affect revenue growth and profit margins.

The note does not establish that AI has no financial value in every company outside tech; its findings concern the measures Slok examined. Other recent studies have also found that AI has yet to deliver significant productivity gains.